Saturday, August 2, 2008

I did something today that has always bothered me when done by large food corporations; I named a recipe based solely on geography and alliteration. This video recipe for a Tex-Mex style pizza was called "El Paso Pizza" because Paso and Pizza both start with P's, and El Paso is in Texas. I've never been to El Paso, nor do I have any knowledge about their pizza - if they even eat pizza.

Not many people realize that there are absolutely no laws or guidelines on the authenticity of food packaging names, claims, and histories. Those cute little stories that you always see on the back of labels about how Aunt Tillie invented her "Bakersfield Brownies" during the Depression, using chocolate smuggled into to the country by trained hawks. It's all made up. The name, the location, the part about the hawks - all invented in some marketing meeting.I realize that none of you really care why this is called El Paso pizza, but I wanted to call your attention to the whole "amazing but true story behind the name" scam at the supermarket. Just another reason not to buy prepared foods! Anyway, this video recipe is quite tasty and a great idea when you can't decide whether to have pizza or tacos.

In the video I mention to try and use grass-fed beef, which is now available, ground in one-pound packages, at most major supermarkets. Here is a link that explains the many health benefits of this, over the conventional corn-fed beef. I'm also linking to the Pizza Dough video, in case you want to make your own. Enjoy!

14 comments:

Anonymous
said...

OK. First, you prep your taco ingredients - meat, cheese, onions, peppers, olives, and such. (this is usually done to use up left overs) Then, you mix some cornbread batter. Melt some bacon drippings in a cast iron skillet and pour the batter in. Top batter with taco stuff. Bake in 400 F oven. (About.com southern food can show you how) My momma was from Texas and I was raised in the Southwest. This Mexican Cornbread Pizza is pretty popular out that way.

Yum, looks good! I'll have to look around for some grass-fed beef, for sure. And I've been meaning to make some of that pizza dough for a while now. If I do, might have to keep it a secret from my neighbor... she'd take over my apartment if she found that I was making my own pizzas!

Doubt you're gonna respond to a comment on a video as old as this one, but I'm planning on making this tonight with a few changes*, one of which I have a question on: As an experiment I'm using a small amount of masa harina (kinda sorta a very finely ground cornmeal, same stuff they use to make tortillas) inside the dough. Will this change the cooking time for the dough to be cooked through and nicely browned and chewy? Thanks for all your recipes.

*if anyone's interested in the other changes, I'm doing this in a cast iron pan, using New Mexico instead of Ancho chile powder, and using chihuaha cheese and a few serrano chiles instead of pepper jack, chihuaha cheese being a very nice, mild, Mexican white melting cheese. If you can get it or Oaxacan cheese I'd recommend it over jack!